Fringe Fest; Events With A Middle Eastern Touch

Set up only four years ago by the 17-year-old Zuhal Sultan in Baghdad, this astonishing, burgeoning orchestra recruited members through social networking sites. On their first-ever appearance in the UK, they showcase the rising talents of the Iraqi star Khyam Allami and the Scottish composer Gordon McPherson, creating a new oud concerto for the visit. While in Edinburgh, the young musicians, many untrained, will also receive their only musical tuition this year from a team of international artists.

The Fringe is unflinching in tackling difficult issues in innovative and unusual ways. Three puppeteers from the Scottish company Tortoise in a Nutshell use rod and shadow puppetry with an especially composed score to ask what it’s like to grow up with an absent father who spends most of your childhood working in war zones. Grit spans three decades, from the first Gulf war to the siege of Sarajevo, Uganda, Cambodia and present-day Homs in Syria, through the eyes of a schoolgirl trawling through her dad’s role as a war photographer.

The Edinburgh International Book Festival, which runs alongside the Fringe, is always as much about ideas in the air as words on the page. This debate, chaired by the Turkish author Elif Shafak, questions whether novelists ought to write about causes they believe in, or if they should be above the problems of the day. Ahdaf Soueif, the Egyptian author of The Map of Love and witness to last year’s events in Cairo, joins in the discussion.

The Edinburgh International Festival has been slightly eclipsed by the more popular Fringe, but it still brings the best worldwide classical music to the churches and concert halls of the Scottish capital. The Kabul-born virtuoso Homayun Sakhi is arguably the greatest living exponent of the Afghan rubab, the double-chambered lute that’s at the heart of Afghanistan’s Pashtun klasik tradition. This is a rare chance to hear the highly expressive music as Sakhi plays alongside Salar Nader on tabla and Abbos Kosimov on doyra.

You might think it’s a joke – and it is. Stars of the Dubai comedy scene chance their arm in Edinburgh. “We don’t pay tax so expect 40 per cent more laughs,” they joke, a gag that might not amuse the highly taxed audience. Two Brits, an Arab and an American brave the boos and guffaws for an evening of international stand-up comedy. And it’s free.

The book festival takes its international title very seriously, providing a great opportunity to see authors from around the world. This year, the winner of the 2009 International Prize for Arabic Fiction and scholar of religious scripts Youssef Ziedan is reading from and discussing his recent novel Azazeel. Set in the fifth century, it tells the tale of a monk’s journey from Upper Egypt to Syria during a time of social upheaval.

There should be a few big laughs here. The Lebanese-Australian comedian Imaan Hadchiti and his sister are the only two known cases of Rima Syndrome, a genetic condition causing small stature yet retaining normal proportions. Hadchiti stands at 107cm (three feet, six inches) tall, but his jokes are on us. His comedy routines focus on the way people react to him. Hadchiti claims his first television role was a possum. Now that’s a tall story.